Happiness Trap Version 2

Contents

Chapter 1 Life is difficult

Chapter 2 The Choice Point

Chapter 3 The black hole of control

Chapter 4 Dropping the struggle

Chapter 5 How to drop the anchor

Chapter 6 The never ending story

    Unhooking techniques

Chapter 7 Off the hook

Chapter 8 Frightening images, painful memories

Chapter 9 The stage show of life

Chapter 10 Leaving the comfort zone

Chapter 11 The value of kindness

Chapter 12 Hooked on a feeling

Chapter 13 The struggle switch

Chapter 14 Making Room

Chapter 15 Tame it with kindness

Chapter 16 Be present

Chapter 17 Reinhabiting your body

Chapter 18 Worrying, ruminating, obsessing

Chapter 19 The documentary of you

Chapter 20 Healing the past

Chapter 21 The art of appreciation

Chapter 22 A life worth living

Chapter 23 One step at a time

Chapter 24 The Hard barriers

Chapter 25 Difficult decisions

Chapter 26 Breaking bad habits

Chapter 27 Staying the distance

Chapter 28 Breaking the rules

Chapter 29 Ups and downs

Chapter 30 A Daring adventure

 

 

Chapter 1 Life is difficult

Life is hard: we will experience joy, success, failure and bereavement.

Life isn’t sensible: we know things that are good for us but we don’t always do them (or do them too much!)

Happiness isn’t normal: mental health problems are rife possibly because our emotions are evolutionarily designed to:

1.       Continually look for danger, which enabled our gene pool to survive all the threats in our history

2.       Continually check if I am socially acceptable, so will stay in the pack (am I good enough in comparison to others, am I liked\valued enough by others)

3.       Continually strive to get more and be better, which evolutionarily has warded off danger

Definition of Happiness: a state of having pleasure\joy\gladness\contentment

Happiness Myths

1.       Happiness is a natural state

a.       But emotions come and go, like the weather

2.       If you’re not happy you’re defective (follows from 1.)

a.       Other feelings mean there’s something wrong with you

Happiness alternative

Happiness is leading a meaningful life, which will have all the emotions in pleasure and pain , the Greeks called it Eudaimonia.

Pain is inevitable, but we can lessen it, and make it worthwhile.

 

Chapter 2 The Choice Point

There is the life you want to move towards

And the life you want to move away from.

There are choices as to which one you choose

 

However away\toward moves seem to suggest a fixedness in what is life affirming. You might decide on an evening to drink a bottle of wine, and that affirmed your life at that time. The next day with your hangover you may regret it, or indeed you might use it as the push to some more life affirming activity. So the meaning of things change with context, which would seem to challenge the simplicity of good behaviour and bad behaviour.

 

Any activity can be a toward or an away move depending on the context. So they are contextually understood although it would still be that you cant exactly tell what a toward or away move is for a while, as the context of a few months, might reinterpret an event.

For instance, you do bad things repeatedly, and after the 100^th time you re-evaluate your values, you have a break through moment, then you could say those bad things were helpful.

We can face difficult\helpful thoughts and feelings that can help us toward or away the life we want.

With difficult thoughts and feelings we can obey or struggle.

Obey: we over identify, the thought\feeling dominates us and we cant think of anything else, we act on the thought without seeing any other option.

Struggle: we try to get rid of the thought\feeling , avoiding, denying, numbing

 

Getting hooked+ away moves=psychological suffering

Almost every psychological disorder, is getting hooked by difficult thoughts\feelings into away moves.

So the idea is, we want to always have towards moves, and we want to unhook from anything thought\emotions that take to an away move.

 

Chapter 3 The black hole of control

Happiness Myth 3: Its easy to control what we think and feel

This leads us to feeling bad if we feel bad!

The illusion of control

Our mind allows us to create amazing things in the external world and have a lot of control, so it seems we should have control over the internal world of thoughts and emotions. Theres a lot of social pressure that assumes we can control our emotions, or you should. So we may present as if we can control our emotions. Theres a conspiracy of silence, a conspiracy of social media photos.

The struggle against the bad thoughts and feelings is the problem, and not the bad thoughts and feelings. The solution is the problem .

 

Struggle strategies

Fight

Suppress, argue, take charge (tell yourself what to do), judge\criticise yourself

Flight

Avoid, distract, numb

 

Struggle strategies are a problem if we do them too much, or do them where they cant work, or where they stop us doing things that are important to us.

 

Experiential avoidance can make us feel worse when we don’t manage to avoid the unpleasant thought\feeling, uses up a lot of energy, and can numb us to other aspects of our life that maybe enjoyable.

 

Avoidance can be subtle, you can be giving to charity to avoid being selfish, you can work hard to succeed as you want to avoid a feeling of failure.  Theres a thin line here,  A desire for success is a desire not to fail, so how much are you avoiding failure. Would you care about your success if no one knew about it? If you failed would you pick your self back up and try again as succeeding is more important than failing, Edison lightbulb. Making friends as you are afraid of rejection.

You will also notice that the thing you are doing might lack the vitality that it might have, as your primary reinforcement is negative, getting rid of something unpleasant.  You can see this in action, when you ate something tasty to get rid of an unpleasant feeling, it wouldn’t have tasted as nice as it does if you just wanted to eat it.

If you do something that’s important to you, its value guided action

If you do the same thing, to get rid of unpleasant thoughts\feelings it’s a struggle strategy.

How to help with struggle strategies:

1.       Notice that you are doing it

Chapter 4 Dropping the struggle

Whilst we can avoid, and struggle with external things, it does seem that we can as effectively do that with internal things.

We cant avoid our experiences its there, and returns. Indeed as we try to avoid, we stress its importance to us, so paradoxically can increase its presence. Again if we argue with something, then we provide a lot more connections to the thought that we want to get rid of .

Try to suppress, avoid, struggle, takes effort, doesn’t get us to learn to be with the unpleasant experience, but its still here. Putting all this effort into this unpleasant experience also blocks your engagement with the world. Also our difficult thoughts\feelings have useful information for us, about something that isn’t working for u.

Chapter 5 How to drop the anchor

Emotional storms mean we obey or struggle. Dropping the anchor allows you to weather the storm, and the boat stays steady

Noticing and naming thoughts and feelings: when we do that it reduces their effect on us. Reasons? PFC activated limbic system reduces, disidentification.

ACE:

Aware

Connect:

Engage:

Aware that I am noticing thoughts\feelings

Connecting with my body

Engaging with something that’s important to me

 

Connect with your body:

Move different parts of your body: muscles on your face. Stretch all your fingers, stretch your arms and legs . Push your feet into the floor, shoulders to ears. The aim is to engage your body to give yourself more control over it whilst the emotional storm rages.

 

Engage with what you are doing.  5-1 grounding exercise and return to what you were doing, or want to do.

 

 

The aims of drop the anchor are to steady the ship in an emotional storm which means

·         Not obey or struggle by

o   Having more control over your body and what you do

o   Being more aware of your thoughts and feelings

·         Not having away moves

·         Encourage toward moves

 

 

 

Chapter 6 The never ending story

Thought=words or images, said or used for self

The stories we tell ourselves using thoughts, are either how we see life (judgements, opinions etc) or what we want to do with it (plans).

ACT cares about whether our thoughts are helpful\unhelpful, not true or false. Do they help us create the life we want.

Many psychotherapies and  popular opinions see negative thoughts as bad for you and the cause of mental health disorders.  They then recommend struggling with the thoughts, arguing with them, trying to replace them with positive thoughts.  This might work in the short term, but the negative stories keep on coming back.

This is because there is no delete button in the brain

Neuro plasticity, lays new pathways on top of old ones, it doesn’t replace them.

 

Negative thoughts aren’t the problem in and of themselves, its only when we struggle or obey them that they are.

Obey mode

WE fuse with our thoughts and they dominate us, we cant think of anything else (worrying ,ruminating etc), or we cant stop doing anything that relates to them (reassurance seeking, hyper vigilance etc)

If your thoughts\emotions dominate you, then you don’t see what else is out in the world, you don’t effectively see other thoughts\actions and people

 

Why does our mind say negative things?

Its an overly helpful friend, that tries to protect us (from unpleasant thoughts, feelings), prepare us for action, to learn from the past. To map the world out in terms of good and bad, and point you towards them. Uses comparison to ensure we are good enough for the tribe and wont be rejected.  Self criticise to motivate ourselves to action. The mind gets us to adhere to rules as we believe if we stick to the rules we will be safe.

 

We are hooked when are thoughts are absolute: commands and rules . That are thoughts are very important, that they are the truth.

 

Mind has

1. Judgements

How we are doing to avoid problem, and to get pleasure

2. Reasons

That dictate where problem and pleasure are found

3. Rules

That dictate where problem and pleasure are found

 

Unhooking techniques

1.       Musical thoughts

a.       Sing them, us a app to put music to your voice

2.       Name the story

a.       This allows you to collect a number of different thoughts under one theme, the “loser story”

3.       Name the process

a.       What are you doing: worrying, ruminating, fantasising.

4.       Thank you mind

a.       Thank your mind for what its saying and possibly why but don’t buy into it

5.       Playing with the text

a.       Increase\decrease the space between the words, change the font, the colour. Animate the letters\words

6.       Silly voices techniques

a.       Say the thought in a silly voice : use a voice changing app

 

To unhook from thoughts, when you have a thought that you want to unhook from say, I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that.

Principles of unhooking:

1. The aim is not to get rid of them but to see them for what they are: words, this can reduce obey\struggle

2. You may feel better but this isn’t the main point, its to unhook so you have more control

3. You’re human and will forget this approach at times

4. If they don’t work go back to dropping the anchor

 

Chapter 7 Off the hook

 

Unpleasant thoughts about self, even if true, can make you feel bad, when you feel bad you can do away moves.  So Imagine if you’re unpleasant thoughts had no effect on you, would you act differently? Many people say yes, they’d act more in line with their values.

If a thought doesn’t tell what to do to improve a situation its demoralising.

The key question is do our thoughts help, and help in the long run.

 

For instance  a self critical thought, I’m fat, can help me in the short term to motivate but used too much it can depress us and make us feel bad about ourselves.

Which thoughts to believe?

Do they help you in the long term be the person you want to be?

Don’t hold thoughts too tightly as then you get inflexible and that creates some problems, not least generally peoples beliefs change over time, and you will benefit from allowing this, as your beliefs reflect your changed context.

Pay attention to direct experience rather than what your mind says.

We don’t choose most of our thoughts, we choose some of them sometimes.

 

 

 

Chapter 8 Frightening images, painful memories

You can get hooked by memories, or images

 

Unhooking from Images:

1.       I’m noticing that I’m having the image\memory\fantasy that

2.       Connect with your body

3.       Engage with what you’re doing

Defusing from images

 

1.       Put the image on a TV screen, then play with the picture, turn it upside down, increase the colour etc. If it’s a video, play it forward, backwards etc

a.       Add subtitles

b.       Add a soundtrack

2.       Put the image in different locations,

a.       a runners t shirt

b.       a billboard

c.       being dragged behind a  plane

Exposure can work with things in the external or internal world.

 

Chapter 9 The stage show of life

You can watch all of your experiences. So you have thoughts and emotions and you can see yourself, experience yourself having them, and you can notice yourself noticing, you can even try to notice awareness.  There is a mind that thinks, and a mind that notices.

The mind that notices is responsible for awareness, focus and attention.

Theres no way to switch off the thinking self, well apart from drink and drugs.

If the thinking self broadcasts something helpful, we listen to it, otherwise we ignore it.

But then who is the self that decides if the thinking self is helpful? The part of me that has active thoughts, rather than passive thoughts.

We let the radio play in the background without giving it attention, which is quite different from trying to ignore it

Let your thoughts come and go in the background without giving them much attentions

Ten slow breaths

Take ten slow breaths, noticing the sensation of breathing, let your thoughts and images come and go in the background as if they are cars passing outside your house. When a cognition comes just say silently thinking, like you would acknowledge a passing motorist.  If you get hooked by a thought chain, just say hooked before  returning.

If you don’t like focusing on your breath ,then you can focus on walking\stretching\or you body.

Walking meditation, body scan  or mindful stretching.  Be with the sensation of what you are doing, and let your thoughts be in the background

 

 

Chapter 10 Leaving the comfort zone

The mind\body likes to keep us safe, so within the comfort\stagnant zone.

To get out of it you can defuse from unhelpful thoughts or to do things its worth leaving the zone for

Goals: Emotional, behavioural and outcome

You can have a goal of being married, without living your value of love, values and goals don’t always coincide, although people generally value the goal for the value it holds

Acting on values you can do immediately, it can empower you, and give you a sense of freedom, I don’t have to wait to get a wife to be loving.  If we cant get our goal we can be frustrated.

The more pre occupied we are with things that are out of our control, the more hopeless we feel.

Your behaviours influence the world you live in, so acting on your values, influences the world around you.

The bigger the gap between reality and what you want, the greater suffering you have. If Goals relate to the life you want then living to values helps us with a large reality gap.

 

Goal is where do you want to be, value is how do you want to get there.

If you only focus on the goal, the pleasure and happiness is short lived.

Chapter 11 The value of kindness

If you’re going through a difficult journey would you prefer a companion who tells you to put up with it and get on with it or someone who is kind, acknowledges your suffering, and who says I’m in this with you and I’ve got your back? Which one do you want, which one are you?

 

Self compassion begins with acknowledging your pain. Here is suffering, or to defuse with it, I’m noticing that there is suffering here.  This is a moment of suffering., this really hurts.

 

Being hard to yourself can be motivating in the short term but in the long term makes you depressed, feel bad about yourself, gives you burn out.

 

Critical approaches can motivate in the short term but demotivate in the longer term

Self compassion, acknowledge the suffering, put it into perspective, you were trying to for instance, or the other part of it went well.

Self compassion acknowledge, say you’re here for them, and that you care about them, a sense of common humanity (every fails), or reducing standards from perfection to good enough.

Encouraging: this was a tough day, but I will have a rest and come back to it fresh tomorrow.        

Pay attention to the way you talk to yourself, what tone are you using.

Can be helpful to have a mantra of validation, this hurts, and an intention: be kind

Kind action: again notice what things you can do that might be kind knowing how things are for you at the moment.

 

 

 

Chapter 12 Hooked on a feeling

Emotions change our body and prepare us for action.  We have an emotion, we then have an action tendency

We fight or flight from thereat, which has physical origins, we can also freeze when we think fight or flight is futile.

The freeze response can result in numbness or apathy\hopelessness

You can feel one way, have urges to act one way and yet act another way, a way that is in your best interest. We have little control over the feelings we have, but we do have control over how we react to them.

So with a strong emotion we neither need to obey it: and act how it would “naturally” want us to, so for fear: fight\flight, nor struggle with it, looking to get rid of the feeling through reassurance\substance.

Emotions are like the weather, they can change in quantity, stronger to weaker, they can change in quality from sadness to anger, they can change in mixture, bored and lonely.

Emotion: Parts

1.       sensation

2.        cognitions

3.       urges

 

Emotions serve three main purposes

1.       Communication

2.       Motivation

3.       Illumination

 

Communication: to self and others. To yourself this guides you, to the others this can help manage your relationship, or you can be asking the other to respond.

Motivation: emotions spur us to take actions

Illumination: Shows what’s important to us, and that we need to attend to,  we can learn from our emotions

 

Chapter 13 The struggle switch

When we struggle with our emotions, want to get rid of them, then we have both the emotion and the emotion about the emotion: having it,  not getting rid of the emotion, etc. We then can use struggle strategies to get rid of the emotion, distraction, numbing etc.

It seems also with our struggle switch on, emotions stay longer! What we resist persists. I guess in part as the emotion dominates us.

 

Chapter 14 Making Room

[TODO]

 

Every painful feeling tells you something.

The bigger the gap between the life you want and the life you want the more painful feelings.

 

Method:

1.       Recall a painful  event a memory or something that’s coming up

2.       TAME

a.       Take note of bodily sensations

b.       Allow them to be there

c.       Make room for them to flow through you

d.       Expand awareness to engage with the world and give them context

 

Take Notice

Body scan, notice feeling, describe as much as you can, name it in a way that makes sense to you

Allow

Say to yourself allowing: you don’t have to like it but you just have to accept that it is here. Don’t try to get rid of it or change it, just allow it as it is.

Make room

Breathe into it and around it. Imagine expanding around it, tense your body around it, and then release. As you do notice if there is anything else in there.

Expand awareness

Pay attention to the rest of your body, parts that don’t feel like this feeling.  Move your body, stretch, notice the room around you, with all your senses.

 

Panic attacks

1.       Hooked by scary thoughts

2.       Struggle against anxiety amplifies it

3.       Hyperventilating

How to deal with it

1.       Drop the anchor with the scary thought

2.       TAME the feeling

3.       Slow your breathing, box breathing?

Distraction: its hard to enjoy something if you are doing it to avoid something else.

 

After you TAME your feelings, there might be something life enhancing to do.

 

Chapter 15 Tame it with kindness

Kind hand

Notice where the distress is in your body , describe it , name it.

Look at your hand and feel the times when you have been kind and put that hand on your body and let that kindness flow inwards,

Imagine your body softening around the pain.

Hold the pain gently like it was a whimpering puppy.

Put the other hand on your stomach, and say some kind words to yourself

This is hard, you can cope, I’m here for you.

This is a moment of care, there’s a gap between what is and what you want.  This is same feeling as many other people on the planet get.

Stretch and engage with the world around you.

 

Urge surfing.

Urges seem to come like waves, they rise, then they fall, we often respond  with a struggle or an obey.

Most urges last 3 minutes, although they can go on for longer if you struggle with them. Urges can come again, like waves, but each one is 3 minutes.

TAME it

Take Note: where is it in your body, describe, and Name it Score the urge

Allow: Let it be there as it is

Make room for it: breathe into it, tense and release your body around it

Expand : broaden your focus to other parts of your body and out into the room\world

Chapter 16 Be present

The more entangled we are with our thoughts then less engaged we are with the world around us.  

When we are hooked in our thoughts, we don’t enjoy what we are doing and do it poorly.

Attentional skills

The ability to move your attention to serve you. Narrow tight attention on a task, broad attention on your field of experience, light responsive attention to be aware of what is happening inside and out.

 

We struggle with reality\our experience when we think things are bad or wrong. That things would be better if they were different.

Boredom means there’s nothing interesting here, it would be better to be somewhere else.  Boredom seems to say we know our experience, we don’t need to be curious there’s nothing more to find.

 

Bring your 5 senses to engage with a pleasurable activity, a tedious activity, to stimulate your engagement.

 

Chapter 17 Reinhabiting your body

Body as the core of emotions (says who), numb is a disconnection from the body (says who)

Cutting off from “bad emotions” means cutting off from all emotions, the “good” ones too. Having bodily awareness of our emotions, gives us more control over how we respond to our emotions.

Emotional awareness can give greater vitality in life, greater self and other awareness to build better relationships with self and other, although emotions can be disproportionate, or built on incorrect assumptions, I felt fear, I thought it was a tiger but it was a cat.

A Body scan can help be more aware of your body, and your emotions

 

Chapter 18 Worrying, ruminating, obsessing

Trying to stop doing something, can have the beach ball effect, rebound\enhancement.  So stopping worry

Ruminating\worrying\obsessing are all problem solving techniques, to get us more of the good stuff and less of the bad.

Difficult situation\feeling\thought

Strategy of Worry\ruminate\obsess

Pay offs (reinforcing consequences):

Worry:

·         Gives temporary relief from initial problem

·         Gets an answer eventually

·         We avoid taking action

·         It gives us a sense we are doing something about it (but we’re not)

These consequences give a short term pay off, so as you change them there can be a temporary increase in distress

 

To manage these cognitive behaviours then

1.       Notice and Name

a.       Return your attention to something more useful

2.       Drop the anchor

a.       Aware of what’s going on, name the process

b.       Connect with your body

c.       Engage with what’s important to you

Ruminating on our emotions

Questions like why do I feel like this or what have I done to deserve this

, trawls all bad events, and makes you feel bad! Broad questions, having wide scope, produce a large quantity of answers. So it’s a really powerful question to ask, why do I feel so bad, as it collects all the bad experiences you have had.

Wishing things were different denigrates now, wants you to avoid it, and therefore you wont get the most out of it. It can help planning for the future.

 

When emotion comes, ask yourself what it shows matters to you.

Dipping in and out of the stream(of thoughts)

Practice with pleasant ones then unpleasant ones.

1.       Have a thought stream for 30 seconds

2.       Drop anchor

3.       Have a thought stream for 30 seconds

4.       Drop anchor and go back to stream or back on with your life

5.       Have a thought stream for 30 seconds

6.       Drop anchor

Chapter 19 The documentary of you

We use harsh self judgements around the theme of I’m NGE, to make a rapid improvement. In short doses this sprint mentality can work, but if its used in the long term can grind us down.

Strategies used to manage feeling NGE, avoid triggers, people please, numb the emotions\suppress the thoughts. People also try to bolster their self esteem. Focus on strengths, appreciate yourself.

Four problems with building self esteem

1.       You cant convince your mind

a.       Provide evidence and then yes but

2.       Its tiring

a.       Hard work trying to prove something to someone who isn’t going to believe you. They can always come up with exceptions.

3.       Big guns prolong the battle

a.       Positive affirmation? But people don’t believe what they say

4.       Positives attract negatives.

a.       When you state the positive the negative is related to it and tends to come, if that’s what you basically feel

You can develop fragile self esteem, where your self esteem depends on doing well at work.

The map is not the territory.

The human mind produces a map of you, who you are, what you can do, but this is based on a really small percentage of your life, we remember very little, we are hopelessly biased

Our self concept is a story that we tell about ourselves, like a documentary about a country , it doesn’t tell us everything, the map is not the country, the concept is not us, we are so much more!!

 

Chapter 20 Healing the past

Giving support to the younger you:

Drop anchor:

Aware I’m noticing that I’m thinking, feeling

Connect with your body

Engage with what you are doing (via grounding

Rember a time when you were young and struggling and enter that image as the older you and validate how they are and then offer to the younger you what you think they most need.

 

Chapter 21 The art of appreciation

Engage with your sensations, really deeply engage with the rain, your food, people you know. Like you’d seen them for the first time. Enjoy the pleasant feelings but don’t cling onto them.

Be present, open up, do what matters.

 

Chapter 22 A life worth living

 Values are what most deeply matters to us, how we want to act, how we want to treat ourselves others and the world around us.

However they aren’t simple. Being kind for instance, you might want to do this in a certain context, and your actions aren’t simple. When I give someone some money, I might be being kind, I might be feeling more powerful over them, I might be increasing my ego as to how rich I am etc etc.

Values are how we do things, goals are things we aim to achieve. Values never end, Goals do.

Goals have values within them, you want to get a job to look after yourself.

Values: how do you want to engage with your life? With the things that happen, how do you want to act?

Living by values, as a meek acceptance of things that shouldn’t be accepted, paid badly at work, then live by the value of consideration be a good worker? I guess it comes back to the idea can the situation be changed, would there be meaning for you trying to change the situation. If you accept it, live by your values, if you don’t, then rage against it.

 

Whilst you’re in a place you don’t want to, you can still value it by living by your values.

 

Living a life that’s goal focussed, means your disappointed until you get the goal, then when you get it the contentment is short lived as you need another goal to get satisfaction.  Values are about enjoying the process.  I will be happy when is a goal orientated statement that leads to fleeting times of happiness.

 

A goal orientated life where the only achievement is goal satisfaction would have a lot of dissatisfaction in it, although can that ever be the case, as you might feel satisfaction in getting towards your goal, you might live your values in working towards your goals. Its not that simple of either being a values based, or goals based approach.

 

Life in obey mode: living by rules

Life in struggle mode: trying to avoid things I don’t like or doing things resentfully.

 

Finding your values

Think of an enjoyable time you had with someone whose company you really value.

Experience it in your memory, then see it on the TV and see how you are acting.  These are your values.

 

Values are not rules. If\when you find them, if you make them into rules you will take away their vitality.  You can get hooked by your rules and feel anxiety if you don’t follow them as you think this will give you the good life.

 

Values continually move, like continents on the globe you never see them all at the same time.  Their priority changes dependent on your role\context.

Values are our desired way of acting not necessarily how we do act.  Makes me wonder though, how much our values are our fantasised life, how I feel I should live, but not necessarily what I truly desire. In the same way that people if offered free movies pick the highbrow ones and never watch them.

In part you can find out what your real values, by acting and continuing to ac ton them and see how they feel.

If you’re going to start acting more on your values, start small. Flavour your current actions with your desired values, Savour when you do act on your values.

 

Chapter 23 One step at a time

As you make changes, it seems to help to make small changes in one area. If you do it many you seem to lose focus, don’t get a sense of progress.

 

In difficult situations we can

1.       Leave

2.       Do things that make the situation better by living by your values

3.       Do things that make the situation worse or no better

Supporting option 1/2, there might be groups\people to help

In option 2 as it’s a difficult situation being kind to yourself might be really useful

 

To work on your values then use the value square

4 Domains Work\Love\Health\Play

Write down the values that are important to you

Mark yourself how you are currently acting on each value vs how you would like to

Goal setting

Then set a short term goal in one area, make sure the goal is SMART, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed. Make sure you don’t set  a dead mans goal, i.e. a goal that’s easier if you’re dead, e.g. not being anxious. Any goal that is to not do something is a dead persons goals, so turn it into a live persons goal. Set challenging but realistic goals, and don’t set emotional goals which will just turn the struggle on. 

Goal enabling

Also think of the things that could get in the way of you achieving your goals, so you can work out how to manage them, maybe using drop the anchor to help.

It can help to write your goal down and or tell a friend.

Valued action can be an antidote to worrying. If your head is full of things you care about, its much harder to worry, as you don’t want to.          

It does seem slightly paradoxical in this chapter, where there has been much talk about acting on values as opposed to goals, then they set a short term goal to act more on your values?? So you can have value goals and goal goals? I can sort of sign up with this, but the aim should be surely to embed your values in your activity

 

Chapter 24 The Hard barriers

What gets in the way of you acting how you’d like?

H: hooked

A: avoidance (emotions)

R:  remoteness from values

D:  doubtful goals

 

Help with

Hooked=Drop the anchor

Avoidance=tamed

Remoteness from values

Doubtful goals: unrealistic

 

Whilst you can have reasons why you don’t want to \cant do something important to you, if someone was going to die unless you did it, you would do it. So if its important enough there wont be any obstacle.

 

Chapter 25 Difficult decisions

Managing dilemmas: (we can spend a long time in the psychological smog, trying to work this out)

Step1 acknowledge the dilemma

Step 2 Write down a cost\benefits of each approach

Step 3 No perfect solution: look for the good enough solution, it wont be perfect

Step 4: Theres no way not to choose: Even not choosing is a choice with consequences

Step 5: Acknowledge todays choice: whilst you’re not choosing, acknowledge that choice every 24 hours, I’m choosing to x..

Step 6:  Take a stand: notice the domain the dilemma is in, and establish your values int hat domain and look to act on those values whilst you are choosing not to choose.

Step 7 Time to reflect. Do a CBA on the choice, imagine living each choice, for a certain period each day

Step 8 Name the story: if your mind drags you back into the dilemma then name the story and unhook

Step 9 Open up and make room: give space to any feelings that come up (TAME)

Step 10: Self Compassion: be compassionate, unhook from anything that isn’t kind.

 

Chapter 26 Breaking bad habits

[TODO]

To break a habit

1.       Notice triggers

2.       Establish costs and benefits (and secondary gains)

3.       Establish alternatives

4.       See which unhooking skills can help

a.       Prepare for the unhelpful thoughts\feelings that will arise

5.       See who or what can help and how

a.       Make a commitment, start small, kind self talk,

 

Chapter 27 Staying the distance

Life can seem satisfying when we get thought our obstacles, but then there are more obstacles. Life is the obstacle. So engage with it using your values.  You can retreat from  your obstacles, or you can approach them with your values.

What discomfort are you willing to endure to get what’s important to you?

Think about short term, medium term and long term goals in different domains in your life.

Notice if you are pushing too much in goal achievement, notice if you are asking big life sapping questions such as what should I do with my life, and revert to living by your values.  Ask yourself what do I want to do in the next hour, day, week.

 

How to keep behaviour going

‘The Seven Rs’:

1.       Reminders: to do the behaviour

2.       Records: note how well I have done the behaviour

3.       Rewards: internal or external for doing the behaviour. Internal congratulation from self\other, or some physical reward

4.       Routines: build it into an existing routine seems to happen more easily

5.       Relationships: doing it with someone else: study buddy etc

6.       Reflecting: notice every week, how your change in behaviour is going what’s working, what’s not

7.       Restructuring: change the environment to make the new behaviour more likely and the old behaviour less likely

 

Chapter 28 Breaking the rules

We all have rigid rules if you don’t do x,  the outcomes  will be dire. Rigid rules will have the words, must, should, never, etc. Many of them can be about avoiding things we fear. Which can have an adverse effect in the medium\long term.

Obeying rigid rules: gives us pay offs, we can achieve\get stuff, and we avoid the unpleasant feeling of breaking our own rules

The costs are generally medium\longer term, of not living the life that we value. Also if we don’t face the things we fear we don’t grow in confidence and strength

 

Under rigid rules are important values that we can live by without having life sucking rules.

Notice rigid rules

Do a CBA

Notice the values that they are enabling

Look for flexible ways to enable those values

Look to increase our strength by breaking the rules and replacing with new behaviours

(this requites unhooking to get off autopilot)

 

Brining new skills into your life

1.       Practice.

a.       When and where and how will you do it. So rehearse, and practice

2.       Pause

a.       Give yourself a pause to disrupt your default responses

3.       Start small

a.       Do the thing you want in easier situations, or related situations

4.       Repeat

a.       Until you feel confident.

As much as you have rigid rules on yourself you may have rigid rules on others.   

We might get anxious if we break our rules angry if other break our rules for them.

 

Chapter 29 Ups and downs

Commitment, is to pick yourself up after adversity or getting lost and carry on doing what’s important to you.

At some point you may also want to question are you committed to the right thing or the right way, if thins are not working out for you.

 

Chapter 30 A Daring adventure

Be present

Open up

Do What matters

 

HARD What gets you stuck

Hooked

Avoidant

Remote values

Doubtful goals

 

Choice Point

Obey, struggle or unhook?

In struggle mode, we let the sympathetic nervous system get involved, the fight or flight, but we can let the hippocampus take over and disengage from them

Unhooking skills enable us to see things for what they are words in our head, feelings in our body, or images in our mind.

Drop anchor to help

 

 

Choice point

1.       Leave

2.       Stay and live by your values

3.       Stay and make it worse

 

Choice Point

Instant success or long term frustration

Instant success is live by your values. Long term frustration is live solely by your goals

 

Choice Point

A pleasant feeling or a meaningful life: Transient feelings of pleasure or lasting meaning.

 

Choice Point

Missing out or making the most of: struggle and obey we are anaesthetised from life

 

Choice point

Self kindness or self judgement: self judgement aims for fast reward at the cost of the relationship, self kindness, notices you’re human, flawed and living is hard, so encouragement and support is necessary

 

Life gives most to those who make the most of what life gives.